A quick note on satire

I don't mean to pick on my class, perhaps its my own shortcomings, but I wrote my Op-ed piece as a satire, and no one picked it up.

I intended my op-ed to be a satire on big government programs with hints at the healthcare bill etc. I thought it was a fairly scathing satire with comparisons to the Soviet Union, the Taliban, and some ridiculous arguments like how I was twisting free speech to be a bad thing. However, of four peer editors, none realized my argument was satirical. All of them thought I was arguing for a "universal media" rather than degrading the idea of state-supported and controlled media.

Assuming I did a halfway decent job of making the piece satirical (hopefully I did), there's a problem with the way people are reading things. Everyone is too serious. If this trend is widespread, I could post articles from the Onion all over and people would think they're legit news!!

In the future, be careful to take everything you read lightly and with a grain of humor!

On "Apocalypse Now"

SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE AND DON'T WANT IMPORTANT ELEMENTS OF THE PLOT REVEALED TO YOU DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER.

I decided to put in Apocalypse Now tonight because it's one of those movies all young men have to see, and we're doing the Vietnam unit so I figured it was relevant to class.

The movie is a work of art. It goes beyond a normal war film. Many war films do have some deeper meaning linked to them, but this one is just loaded with the deeper meanings, and for a movie that's thirty years old, the special effects are wonderful. This easily makes my list of top 10 best movies I've seen. With a cast so star-studded that Harrison Ford, Jon Voight, and Laurence Fishburne play minor roles, how could it not be?

Multiple themes and motifs emerged as I watched it. The main ones I spotted and will focus on were noise and the degradation of morals and civilization towards Hell.

First the noise: I noticed this even in class when we watched the scene involving the 1st of the 9th Brigade. Throughout the entire movie, there was all sorts of back ground noise that tells me the director is trying to overwhelm the viewer. During the early parts of the movie, there were helicopters everywhere; towards the middle, shots and flares were all over; by the end, it was just strange music. The music actually showed up often, and it creeped me out. The music described by Mitchell Sanders in The Things They Carried definitely seemed to be being played in the background of Apocalypse Now. I think the goal of overwhelming the viewer was a way to make the war even more real. It begins to wear on you and it actually takes a physical and emotional toll after about an hour, making the movie hellish.

The decay in humanity that was portrayed in the movie certainly goes along with the title and was certainly a purposeful method of embodying the immorality of the Vietnam War and war in general. The movie begins in Saigon with the main character, Captain Willard, drunk and in poor spirits, utterly depressed. This is shows a personal decay.

During the scene we watched in class, the colonel played by Robert Duvall is just nuts. He's got his crap together and is actually an excellent officer, but he's freaking crazy! A bad-ass, but crazy! This scene does a good job of showing an eccentric stage on the trail to insanity.

As Willard progresses on his journey with a crew of four on a small PT boat, they come across a few army outposts. At the first, the scene is a bit of a sensory overload, but then again the whole movie is. Starvation and desire for America and the licentiousness of America is portrayed at this outpost. The 500+ some troops at the outpost are treated to a USO show featuring Hugh Hefner and the best of the Playmates. Things get out of hand when the girls are dancing as the young soldiers have a hard time containing their lust. Nothing too much happens, but the message that they are being starved and are losing conscience is clear.

The next outpost they come across is not nearly as civilized. The soldiers can't even name their commanding officer and bombs, flares, and shots go everywhere. As the boat pulls through the river, soldiers swim after it crying "Take me home! Get me the #$%^ out of here!" It's absolutely shocking to watch. The horrors of this scene make it seem like a living Hell. The scene is filmed at night and only the erratic spurts of muzzle light and flares light the scene. As a viewer, I was rendered speechless and thoughtless. I could only think, "how terrible." When it was emphasized multiple times that there was no CO, it became clear that the reason this scene was there was to emphasize the incompetency of the American commanders and FUBAR situations that occured. I wondered if it could get worse.

As the boat proceeded down the river into Cambodia, they did. When Willard finally got to his destination, the true Hell became apparent. Dead, mangled bodies were everywhere yet there were hundreds of people to care for them and do something about it. The colonel Willard was instructed to kill, played by Marlon Brando, is a heck of a character. There are many strange people in the movie, but he is just insane. As you learn more about the character in the final scenes of the movie, you realize he seems to believe he's not taken steps backward on the continuum of humanity, but has transcended it. Early in the movie, you learn that this colonel, Colonel Kurtz, is a very intelligent and ambitious man but has gone renegade and likely insane. He has come to be a complete autocrat, a demigod more, of a tribe of native Cambodians. Having only watched the movie once and not being a psychology or sociology buff, I don't have much to say except that I was absolutely stunned by the Hell he created.

Besides "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," there are tons of great lines in the movie. Some are just a bit too corny, though. The narration seems to offer tons of cliches like "Oh man, the bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam you needed wings to stay above it. " or "charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500." There was one that stood out as particularly meaningful to the plot, though. "We had reached the end of the river." This just made it obvious that the brink between sanity and insanity had been reached and it was further than anyone thought.

Before I close, there's one more thing I'd like to bring up. The idea of truth and true war stories. We've seen this mentioned in TTTC, but I definitely seems to spread to other Vietnam media as well. If someone tried to tell me that Apocalypse Now actually happened, I would refer them to a doctor. The movie is wacked-out, man! Just FUBAR. Then again, maybe that's why it could be true.

Without seeing Apocalypse Now, there's no way you could ever understand it. It's so powerful and so provoking that it would take three or four viewings to really get it. These are only half of the reactions I got from it in one viewing. I don't think I'm going to sleep tonight...half because I'm thinking about the depth of the movie, half because it scares me a bit too.

Drawing the line on jokes

Earlier this week, we learned briefly about the use of humor in writing, particularly satire. I tend to enjoy using humor in my writing. Usually, I don't use it in the papers that I am really involved in already. Instead, I tend to use it as a relief while writing something I really don't want to be writing. If I have the energy for it (which I often lack, as I do now), these works can become massive satires while just barely serving their actual purpose.

Humor and satire can be used to distract a reader from an otherwise lacking paper. I find myself searching for jokes to tell when I run out of things to say. This goes for conversation as well as writing. Luckily, I have some time to think about what I'm going to say while writing so I don't make a fool of myself by telling a terrible joke. By making a reader laugh, you can make it seem like you're saying a lot more than you actually are.

On the other side of this, I sometimes find it difficult to incorporate humor into papers about topics on which I feel strongly. If I intend to poke sarcastic fun at something I use humor, but unfortunately I'm losing this wit as I try to make my arguments stronger and attempt to use rhetorical strategies beyond my humor that had been signature throughout middle school and early in high school.

Note must be taken, however, that humor is not always appropriate. The line has to be drawn somewhere. Serious topics can have jokes. Those jokes have to be in the right tone to work otherwise they can be construed as disrespectful attempts at making-fun.

It is important to word your passion carefully. A single joke might make an argument collapse on itself if it is not told tactfully.

I had always considered humor to be important in writing. It helps keep the reader awake and interested. Recently, I've felt like I'm failing to do this. Am I getting too mature? Am I losing my touch for humor in writing? From here on out, I am going to try to make my writing a little lighter when I can and use my wit to help my arguments rather than disregarding it.

On "Times have changed for student protestors"

This article was really intriguing to think about after watching "Two Days in October" and learning about the UW-Madison protests during the Vietnam War.

I have to say, I'm not at all surprised that things have changed and become this way today. I'm not one to protest wars, but I'm not usually in fervent support of violence either. However, I think that people who feel that they are truly against the war should be stepping up to make their point known. They aren't apathetic; we know that because they do voice an interest in the topic. Yet they aren't empathetic on the topic either.

Recently, it seems that I've come across a lot of reading about the apathy of today's young people and they ways our generation likes to take the easy way out. I agree that we often do this. In the case presented by this article, though, it is not a case of apathy, but rather a lack of action. People have opinions and are apparently willing to voice them. That's much better than apathy. But there is a problem because we now need people not just to be willing to voice their opinions, but to actually take action to do so.

The social effects of the Vietnam War were certainly greater than that of those of the Wars on Terror. We aren't affected daily and at home by these conflicts by drafts, protests, enormous death tolls, and living-room footage as much as the Americans of the 1960s and 1970s.

Still, it is sad that something like "Grey's Anatomy" would infringe on the ability of students and citizens to exercise free speech and the right to assembly. Certainly media networks are not actively trying to take these rights away (with the exception of FOX), but they are passively breeding latent civic emotion.

We cannot continue to allow the things in our life that really don't matter all that much to take over the things that do matter. It's not too much trouble right now in the situation of war, but what about other things that might escalate to be massive social problems. If people shut off their televisions, looked up from their text messages, and removed their ear buds to take in the world around them and do something about it, we might see some amazing social movements. I can guarantee that there are millions of Americans out there who have ideas to help mend our economy or the environment (they don't have to be big ideas either), but citizens have a loss of efficacy that makes them feel like their opinion won't do anything. As a result, rather than taking action, we open a bag of Doritos and look for the latest developments in the relationships of our favorite celebrities.

What are you going to do about it?

The Civil Rights Movement briefly touched upon

Since we've been talking in class about the civil rights movements and African-American culture so much, it's been on my mind. The Letter from Birmingham Jail certainly expanded these thoughts.



This summer I had the opportunity to take a class in Washington D.C. on American history and politics that focused largely on civil rights. As expected, the texts for the class included essays and speeches like The Ballot or the Bullet by Malcom X, the famed I have a Dream by Dr. King, and many others. The final exam for this test involved an essay section. One of the possible essays was "According to Martin Luther King, what are the goals of the civil rights movement and why do they justify non-violent civil disobedience? What is Malcolm X's criticism of King's goal and his approach?" This was an excellent essay question, but I don't recall if I actually answered this one. In any case, I think it is important to understand the relationship between Malcolm X and MLK.

The two men disagreed over the idea of integration. In King's mind it was important to integrate the negro race into society and not just desegregate. King claimed that civil institutions and legislation could only break down racial barriers so far. Cities and states could choose to desegrate and therefore whites and blacks would be using many of the same facilities and such, but this did not mean the races would get along or love each other. The white American was apathetic to the civil rights cause. Most didn't care whether things were desegrated or segregated. King made the call to sensitize the white man to understand that de jure desegregation wouldn't be enough. It needed to be de facto, or through natural means--"color blindness." Integration would mean that blacks and whites weren't just putting up with each other, but actually interacting socially with each other for personal enjoyment rather than state order. King hoped to achieve this by positive action and encouraging whites and blacks alike to welcome each other through community involvement and good character.

Malcolm X on the other hand was not so happy a singer of Kum-bay-ah. He said that civil rights and the argument over integration came down to two things: the ballot, or the bullet. As it sounds, this was the idea that blacks would gain rights either through civil action or they would eventually take them by force. Black Nationalism was Malcolm X's argument against integration. He felt that black and white could never live together in true harmony and therefore they shouldn't try to do so. X didn't even consider himself American, he considered himself a Negro. In this idea, the government was nothing more than a conspiracy to retard the Negro. X doesn't condemn non-violence either, but instead says that "I'm non-violent with those who are non-violent with me." Black Nationalism required the creation of black communities that did not deal with white society. For some time, these communities thrived culturally. However, their economies were lacking and underground activity, particularly drugs, began to ruin them. While Malcolm X wasn't intending to be violent, he was certainly radical and willing to attain rights through any means in a Machiavellian manner.

History tells us that MLK won this argument, but perhaps we can learn from the seperatism of Malcolm X. Also, reading essays and speeches of both these men give us examples of some of the best rhetoric on the most fiery topic of the 20th century. If you don't know much about the civil rights movement I pity you. If you think you do, look deeper because there is SO much to learn from it.

Definition

I'm sitting in my dining room right now getting ready to write my definition essay. I was sidetracked by the realization that I hadn't done a blog post yet this week so I hopped on to write this.

The essays we read in class for examples were all very interesting. The two poverty ones and the music one were my favorites.

As I sit here trying to figure out what I should write about, I come across a few topics. One that seems to come to mind immediately is virtue and value. I'm sick of writing about that though. In the past three weeks, I've written three college essays on that topic and used a definition argument on virtue in my DBQ for AP Euro this Friday.

Another possibility is music. I thought about this topic a little bit last night at the Homecoming dance but decided I didn't have a good argument for it. Perhaps this was just the result of too many distractions and too little sleep impairing my critical thinking ability.

Last night brought up some more issues for definition as well. The lines between acquaintances, friendships, and relationships for some seemed to be so prevalent and bolded at the dance while for others these lines became so blurred that they are probably in need of redrawing today or over the next week. I have so many thoughts on these definitions flying through my head I can't seem to form an articulate point about any of them yet. Hopefully I will overcome the throbbing bass-induced headache, and 1.5 hours of sleep I've had in the past 54 hours to be able to write a coherent paper on this subject.

So here goes...

Not five minutes after initially posting this, I have already come back and decided that this topic is going to be difficult to write about. Any anecdotes I have to share are ones that I don't know if I'd be comfortable sharing. Maybe I'll overcome this and go for it anyway, but this brings up a new thought:

If the essay is just for an English class, and only a few others in your class and your teacher will be the ones reading it, does it matter what you are divulging?
Or is it easier to divluge personal information to a wide audience of people who don't know you on a personal level and don't really care about you?

Pencil, Pixels and all that stuff

As I was reading Pencils to Pixels, I was somewhat intrigued by the idea of rejecting a pencil as too technological. It was also interesting to learn about the ways some people prefer type, some pencil, some pen. I began to think about what I prefer.

There's no doubt that when I'm writing something of considerable length, I prefer to use a computer. I can type much, much faster than I can write, and it's also easier to go back and edit my type. I prefer to type almost anything that anyone else is going to see, as well. My horrid handwriting prevents others from reading what I've written or scribbled as notes. This is sometimes good because then people are deterred from reading things I don't want them to see. However, it sometimes is bad because occasionally I can't even read my own writing. I used to hate writing when I was younger because my teachers always assumed I was no good at it because of my poor handwriting. Now that I can use a machine as media for my ideas, I can convey them neatly and in an easily readable fashion.

There are sometimes that I would prefer to use pen or pencil. When doing math or science homework and having limited space to show my work, I prefer a pencil to go back and erase and correct mistakes. However, over this past summer, I've discovered that whenever I write something, I prefer to do it in pen. I used to be the type to write with heavy pencil in a spiral notebook. Now my preferred media is a legal pad with a ball point pen. The ball point pen flows easier than graphite and doesn't blot like plain ink does. The other reason I prefer pens to write with is so that I can write faster. Often, if I go back and try to erase something, I forget what I wanted to say next. With pen, I just but a strike through unwanted text and continue writing. The resolve and permanency of pen means that even if I change what I've written, it's still on the paper. My more personal writing is done in pen rather than in type. Poems and short pieces or letters to people are often first drafted with pen on a legal pad and later typed. The pen is so much more personal.

It's strange that I've gone from hardcore pencil enthusiast to a pen lover. I never even used to carry pens at school. Now I only use pencil for tests. This summer I got a free Ripon College pen at Badger Boys State and when it ran out of ink early this schoolyear, I felt sad inside. It was my favorite pen and I had written some fun stuff with it. Although it was just a plain ballpoint, I had a difficult time adjusting to a new pen. Habits in writing form quickly, apparently.

College Thoughts

I'm glad that we did the college essays in class last week because it got me rolling on my applications. I had just started to do my Personal Statement the weekend prior and I probably wouldn't have touched it until now had we not done it in class.

Now that I'm off and running with essays and applications, the weight of what needs to be done is really starting to become obvious. It seems like the application process is only going to be half the battle. By the time my whole process is over, I will have written something like four different types of personal statements because of the different requirements for each application on top of any other essays.

The Common App pretty much is saving my life right now. That someone finally thought to provide one application for some 300 schools is a relief to high school seniors nationwide. Of course, it doesn't make it easier that many of these schools still require a supplement for admission. For some of these schools, the supplement is no more than an additional sheet for scholarship and financial aid application. For others, such as the University of Chicago, there are two or three additional essays to be written.

There is even great difference in those schools that require supplements. Some are the generic:
"Why do you want to attend X University?" While others, again using UChicago as an example, are insightful and require a great deal of creativity. One of the possible prompt choices for Chicago this year is "How did you get caught? (Or not caught, as the case may be)."

It's amazing how many different essays one might write to get into college. From a student's perspective, this is both reassuring and daunting. I don't want to write a ton of different essays to apply to a few colleges, but on the other hand I also don't want to have my admission dictated by only one essay like the Common Application Personal Statement.

Some colleges, such as Marquette University (Advantage application) and Loyola University-Chicago, require only that a student submits a writing sample. This can be almost anything a student has previously written. Creighton University also accepts a previously graded essay from a class for their Quick Application, but this must be under 400 words. Getting under 400 words for a graded assignment is awfully difficult. Creighton also accepts a personal statement on their Quick Application, but this too has to be under 400 words. I don't know that I can express myself properly in 400 words! Marquette and Creighton both also take the common application, but they offer free application if you use the Advantage or Quick Applications that they offer to some students.

Some schools, including most public universities do not accept the Common App and require their own essays that can be some difficult topics. The University of Wisconsin-Madison requires two essays. The first asks the applicant how he or she will "enrich" the campus, and the second asks about the applicants goals and plans for the future.

At face value these seem, to me at least, to be fairly daunting. For one thing my goals are all over the place and I feel like writing about them would be difficult. In regards to the first essay, I really wonder how I would provide diversity and enrichment on a campus of tens of thousands of students as a white, middle-class, Christian male. After putting some thought into it though, I did find that these essays are not as difficult as I thought at first.

So now you've read me venting about my college applications process. I want to hear some other opinions-comment about your experiences or provide a link to a post about it below.

My Biggest Fear

Everyday, I have to face my fear at 8:00 AM. I gather up the courage to pull myself away from a table with all my friends in the cafeteria and walk up the stairs with a trembling in my chest that makes it difficult for me to talk in a level voice to anyone. After reaching the second floor, my anticipation of the fear is overcome by such a rush of adrenaline that my body functions at a higher level than any other time. My heart races at just over 80 beats per minute; my veins stick out of my arms like small pieces of hosing popping from a wall; my pupils dialate to take in enough light to fight whatever foe I might encounter; my muscles swell with blood and water; my ears close out all the white noise and hear only the unusual sounds.

This ecstatic, intense feeling continues as I enter room 213 and see that evil instructor of the English language dwelling in his studious lair and listening to the twangs of bluegrass music to pull in the unsuspecting music enthusiast. This man is the Kunkle. He trains to terrorize high school students day and night all year round. His foul methods of instruction slowly inject one with knowledge that is unwanted.

My fear of this monster began in my freshman year. Every morning I would make the same journey to the Kunkave that I do now as a senior. I have grown no less fearful. Some say that facing a fear is the best way to overcome it. I disagree. Daily, I continue to make myself trek to that lowly room where he waits in inglorious sea of poetry and rhetoric. Waiting to teach, but I resist the knowledge. Wanting to inspire, but I remain complacent.

The fear I have was created during the Mythology unit in English 9. Learning of gods and titans, muses and fates, I realized that there was something horrid about this man. He continued to attempt to poison my fellow freshman and me with a daily poem that was the appetizer for his gruessome feast of language and composition. A banquet filled with the sour taste of grammar. The horrors continued daily as we moved into Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet. One would have expected such a classic novel to be palable. However, the story of love offered no love of any kind under the harsh regime of the Kunkle. I am lucky to have survived to take the class in which I am currently enrolled.

It is my hope that by conditioning myself gradually to this man's mad approach to instruction I may overcome my fear. By exposing myself to his methods for an hour and a half each day, I hope to either reverse his terribly tyrannical type of teaching or to become so atuned to it that I no longer am fearful.

On "Seeking"

"Seeking" was the article that Melissa chose to share with our class for her Choice Essay presentation. I read it last night and was absolutely taken away by it.

The article basically told about how our brains get a great deal of pleasure by searching or hunting for things. In fact, they receive more pleasure from the chase for something than actually getting it. This explained to me so many things in life in so many different areas. This explains a lot about love and sensual excitement learning, eating, and all sorts of things.

I love to learn and I figured out why it's so rewarding for me: it's an ongoing search and there is no final goal or ending point at which I am let down some by the final high. Dopamine is the stimulant that gets one excited in the chase, while opiates are what is released when the reward is reached. Dopamine is a stimulating high and opiates are a relaxing high. So basically, when I'm learning it's like having a high without ever having the let down. The same part of the brain is stimulated by sexual excitement. I won't go into the physiology of sex too far, you can read that on your own...but if you think about it, sex brain chemistry can relate to lots of things in life.

I found myself relating to the article at every point: personal experiences were ubiquitously connected. In fact, I was connecting what I was doing at the time with the article. While reading the article, I was multitasking by reading, Facebooking, and chatting. The article spoke about conditioning and Pavlov's dog and how people become excited when they get a new message, or their phone rings. I got a sense of expectation everytime my Skype account dinged that I had a new instant message from someone or everytime the little red box of Facebook notifications popped up. It's clear that Facebooking has become a source of dopamine for me. That's probably not a good thing either. When I get bored with doing homework I go on Facebook or Youtube, even if I know there's nothing to see.

The fact that seeking for information online is becoming like a drug addiction is well-founded. We must be careful about how much we are googling or twittering, etc. I don't think that these things are as dangerous as the author says, but we must exercise discretion in how we use them. Searching for information is a good thing; it's just important that we do it at the right time in the right way.

External links: "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Nicholas Carr

On "The Courthouse Ring"

Malcom Gladwell made some pretty awesome connections in his article about Southern Liberalism and To Kill a Mockingbird. I must admit, like everyone else, I never read into TKAM that much. I took it for an assigned reading in English 9. I enjoyed it, but never read into it.

The connection to Jim Folsom and other Southern Liberals was excellently founded. Throughout the 1800s, one could have said that Northern moderates and liberals fell into the same category. For instance, the Free-Soil Party which later evolved into the Republican party are examples that are similar.

The Free-Soil Party didn't necessarily fight for the abolition of slavery, only for the constraint of it. The party was willing to take action to prevent the spread of the institution, but were willing to allow it to continue where it was, with the hopes that enough sentiment against it would soon follow. This is like Jim Folsom and Atticus Finch because all of these parties are willing to put their foot down to prevent further injury but will not take measures to directly reverse adverse effects.

The Republican Party formed from the Free-Soilers and other parties. As it was created in our country's darkest hour on the eve of the Civil War, it was somewhat more radical than its predecessors. The Republican Party had the same free-soil policy, but as some Republicans began to take their ideals further, they began to call for more immediate aboltion.

Abraham Lincoln was the Republican Party's second presidential candidate. He is very much and Atticus Finch. Lincoln's initial goals were to keep the union together. Originally, he planned to bring the South back to the Union, institute free-soil policies and continue slavery as it was and watch it wane away. However, following Gettysburg, he realized that the war was no longer going to be solely a battle over the Union or secession. The war became idealogical as well and that was solidified with the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. That action, too, though is also a very Atticus Finch-esque one. For being as famous as it is, the Emancipation Proclamation did effectively nothing. It was just a statement of ideology rather than a true ultimatum of any sort.

In late 1863, when Lincoln gave his famed address to dedicate Gettysburg National Cemetery, he began by saying, "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." That sentence has been immortalized in history. The tale that Lincoln wrote his address on an envelope on the train to Gettysburg is a myth. He planned this carefully. It was finally then that he had moved away from being a bystander liberal and became a fully active crusader. If we didn't mean to truly find equality, he wouldn't have said "conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." That phrase is not just rhetorical flourish to make a citizen feel better about the Union. It is a statement of principal, morality, and a call to uphold that principal.

How I Write

A lot of Romano's words hold true for me. He talked about getting comfortable when writing and finding the places and things that make you want to write.

My best writing is probably done when I'm alone in my room. I'll either sit on my bed and write in a notebook and just write my thoughts or poems and short things, or I'll bring my laptop to my room and type away on my desk until I need a break. I used to do most of my writing in my family's living room area where our desktop computer is, but lately that has been getting too distracting unless I'm alone and it's late at night. It doesn't matter for me much where I am as long as I'm in a comfortable seat, and feel safe in my environment without distractions.

When I was on vacation in Upper Michigan, I went and sat by a lake for two hours just thinking, listening to music and writing so fast and with so much feeling and emotion that I don't know if I would ever feel comfortable publicly displaying some of the things I wrote then. I could tell that that writing was very driven by passion because I went back to look at it just recently and noticed that it took on a very different style than most of my writing. The sentences were short but descriptive. I also didn't do much to break things into paragraphs because when it came out, I was just putting my thoughts almost directly onto a page. Only when I typed these things up the other day did I actually put things into paragraphs.

Stylistically, I often write in fairly long sentences. They are not as long as Mary Wollestonecraft, but compound sentences that have many appositives and often multiple, descriptive adjectives to describe one or more subjects or objects. When I go back and proof-read, I'm very hesitant to change my style at all. Occaisonally I'll but a sentence backwards or change two sentences around because it sounds better or makes more sense to someone reading it. Most of the time, though, I like the words I used the first time and the order they first appeared for me.

At times I feel like my writing is not accesible to readers because I'm afraid I am writing like a textbook or even a politician of the 1700s. I often fear that my thoughts get too strung out, that I tangent too much, and the style and language I use is too heavy. Sometimes I think that I wouldn't even want to read my own writing except for the fact that when I go back to read things, they are clearly things I'm interested in. My writing ends up being okay. I don't like all of it, obviously, but it is readable in the end. I've sometimes gone back to old papers and marked them up and said things differently to see how I've improved from my writing in middle school or even as a freshman.

When Dr. Romano talked about proofing a draft, he emphasized using wide margins and double spacing to make the paper easy to read and accesible to comments. I like to have the same. As much as I believe in conserving paper, I don't like to proof without having a hard copy to write on. That's why I've begun to use the mark-up tool on Microsoft Word when I'm revising papers and don't want to waste ink or paper.

As far as the main theme, Dr. Romano is trying to get across, I feel that I'm doing a better job everytime I write of trusting my language. In the past, every sentence I wrote would take a minute or more of deliberation. I would think, "Is this what I want to say? Does this have some wit to it? Is this serious enough?" Now, I feel like I'm slowly getting better at just writing what I think and having it come out in such a way that it does work. Unfortunately, my thoughts aren't always organized enough for this to work.

Finally, the tone with which I write varies often from piece to piece. In most pieces I've written, one will find a satirical or sarcastical sense of humor evident. Sometimes it will be a very childish or ironic remark in the midst of a fairly serious subject. This is me being me in my writing. However, at times, I leave the humor out because I just get so caught up with something that I don't allow my little wits and jokes to spice-up my writing. On the other hand, there have been papers that I go into intending to be funny to keep the mood light and the reader poisoned with laughter.

"Ambition must be made to counteract ambition"

The second choice essay I have picked is quite a contrast from the first. Below, my very brief analysis of The Federalist No. 51. This particular selection from the Federalist Papers is by James Madison, under the pen name Publius as all the papers were.

I have read this essay at least three times and each time I learn more from it. If there is one particular piece of writing that can be used to describe the basis for the Constitution of the United States of America, it is this paper. It's freaking awesome.


The essay focuses on the system of checks and balances to be set up in the government. Publius says that each branch of government must be seperate so that the legislative branch is not domineering although they are intended to be the strongest. Additionally, Publius stresses that positions and posts in the government must have enough power and salary to attract people to those positions. For instance, if the president had little pay and barely any power over the legislature, nobody would want to rise to the presidency. "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition."

As always, there is the importance that each branch and faction is protected equally. To ensure this in the government, the branches have powers and checks on each other that anybody who has taken a civics class should be educated in. More in depth, though, is the way that the people check each other. Publius continues the argument he laid forth in The Federalist No. 10. He says that we can control the effects of liberty rather than remove its causes which would be against all republican and democratic doctrine. He warns that too much liberty can be extremely dangerous, especially to the minority that could be easily oppressed. Instead, justice must be achieved. "Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society."

The effects of liberty are to be controlled and justice to be served by expanding the population and landmass of the republic so that there be so many interests and factions that no one homogenous group can form a majority in all cases. This is exactly what has created the controversies that run Washington and our nation.

I would love to discuss this article and some of the other Federalist Papers at great length, but I'll spare us all the extensive time.

On "The Last Iconic Baseball Card"

For my first choice essay, I chose an article from a recent Sports Illustrated Issue by Luke Winn.

The article discusses the changes in the baseball card industry (or sports cards in general) in the past 20 years. It begins by setting a scene at the headquarters of Upper Deck, a card producing company. Winn is very descriptive in his portrayal using excellent metaphors and similies to insert humor and imagery. Upper Deck will be no more soon because after 2010, the MLB has granted monopolic rights only to Topps, another trading card company.

The article also talks about how in Ken Griffey Jr.'s rookie year (1989), his card was not expected to be the #1 card although it ended up being. His one rookie card is worth a great deal. When Derek Jeter was a rookie in the early 1990s, eight rookie cards were produced and reproduced. Then when Albert Pujols was a rookie in 2001, he had 43 rookie cards. The extensive inflation of the industry is a result of lower demand. The value of cards has become very low. Now many companies are going out of business rapidly.

I noticed that this article was written in a nice and simple tone using very common vernacular, as most articles from Sports Illustrated are. This helps appeal to the audience of people like myself who just want to read about sports and not have to think too much about it. Still, this article does provoke some thought as to what other industries have begun to decline like the baseball card industry. Are we getting unappreciative of things too fast? Is there any value in nostalgia any more?

On "A World Lit Only by Fire"

I would like to begin by saying that William Manchester is basically the man. However, despite how much of the man he really is, he seems to have a severe man-crush on another the man, Ferdinand Magellan. More on that later.

A World Lit Only by Fire really grabbed me when I started reading it. I began by reading it on vacation up north and in the first two days of my vacation I read over 100 pages of the 296 page book. Over the next three days of my vacation, I read 30.

To provide some background, the book is split into three sections: The Medieval Mind, The Shattering, and A Man Alone. The first is only about 30 pages in length, the last nearly 80.

Being that the second is so lengthy, I think that Professor Manchester would have been better off carefully splitting (rather than shattering) The Shattering into multiple sections because it discussed some topics, that although not extremely varied, became confusing when all put together because of the time period overlap and such. The Shattering generally discusses the ways in which medieval Europe reached a barrier of corruption and stupidity that launched the world into the Renaissance.

The first section provides the reader with an idea of what the average medieval man would be like and how individuals and institutions thought or didn’t think and how society ran. The third section is nothing but a tale of Ferdinand Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe and the isolation of his crew from goings-on in Europe at the time.

As for an analysis of Professor Manchester’s style and rhetoric in this book, I noticed a few things in particular. I have not read any of his other works but certainly plan to when I find the time. Immediately, I noticed it read slightly different than most non-fiction books I have previously read. Perhaps that is because many of those are chronologies of events told by primary sources in great detail or are often autobiographical. This book, though is also unlike a history textbook because it reads a bit more conversationally and informally. It is almost like a lecture for a class of 25-50 students. Manchester doesn’t tend to pose rhetorical questions as many lecturers might, but in many ways his short two page sections that make up the book are like short lessons.

Something else I took note of while I was reading was that Manchester often uses longs lists to emphasize points. These lists can be for descriptive purposes, but more often they list a number of nouns or verbs to show depth or breadth of a certain topic. For instance, at the very end of the The Medieval Mind, he sets up his next section to discuss some certain men and two women influential to the times:
Some of the dragons were benign, even saintly; others were wicked. All, however, would seem monstrous to those who cherished the status quo, and their names included Johannes Gutenberg, Cesare Borgia, Johann Tetzel, Desiderius Erasmus, Martin Luther, Jakob Fugger, Francois Rabelais, Girolamo Savonarola, Nicolaus Copernicus, Giordano Bruno, Niccolo Machiavelli, William Tyndale, John Calvin, Vascon Nunez de Balboa, Emperor Charles V, King Henry VIII, Tomas de Torquemada, Lucrezia Borgia, William Caxton, Gerardus Mercator, Girolamo Aleandro, Ulrich von Hutten, Martin Waldseemuller, Thomas More, Catherine of Aragon, Chrisopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and—most fearsome of all, the moan who would destroy the very world cartographers had drawn—Ferdinand Magellan.

Was that list long enough for you? I can name many others that Manchester talked about with some extent in the book, but there are also two or three of those names I swear never came up.

I’d like to direct your attention again to the above quotation, but just to the last two lines about Magellan. Honestly, I was expecting the build up at the end for one big name, but I expected it to be Martin Luther, Michelangelo, or Leonardo Da Vinci; the latter two don’t even appear in the list. In any case, the description he uses to build up Magellan is quite characteristic throughout the book. He uses flowing, crescendo-ing, often lengthy sentences to describe a person. I enjoyed this for the most part, but it became a bit annoying at times. He often starts a point with a short compound sentence and follows it with a longer, descriptive one or two that give examples. Additionally, the subject or object, followed by a dash, followed by a phrase, followed by a dash, followed by the remainder of the sentence, is a ubiquitous tool in Manchester’s writing. He uses the dash to insert appositives and parenthetical elements that he feels deserve additional emphasis. I must say, it’s effective as hell, too.

Some criticisms I have of Manchester, and this might be to my own fault as well, deal with confusion. For one thing, the book doesn’t go in chronological order, it discusses a person or event and then, to provide background, has to tangent to talk about the people and places involved. The result is that in the middle of the book, the reader is assumed to know about some characters and events already and then is being introduced to new things that seem like they should follow the events already discussed, but are really occurring before hand. It gets very confusing and a more detailed timeline provided with the book would have been nice. Another source of confusion to the somewhat unengaged reader is that Manchester might go a full two pages referring to a character only as “he” or “she” and the reader easily forgets who is being talked about, especially when there are multiple people being discussed. A character might be referred to by multiple names or titles too. For instance, Martin Luther is, among others, “the monk, the heretic, the professor, the young priest, the Franciscan, the Wittenberg man…”

The final section of the book is where the man-crush the Professor Manchester has for Ferdinand Magellan really becomes apparent. For one thing, the final section, at times, reads more like a fiction book or non-fiction story because of the more romantic language and description. He certainly borrows much from Don Antonio, Magellan’s biographer.

The last few pages of the book discuss the ways that the medieval world exploded or shattered into the renaissance and how the 247 men of Magellan’s crew that didn’t return to Spain didn’t get to witness some of the most explosive events of it. The ending also portrays Magellan as an immortal hero and gives a morality lesson in what heroism truly is.

I could talk all day about the history lessons I’ve learned from A World Lit Only by Fire. This book has been eye-opening by increasing both my historical knowledge, and ability to read and hopefully has taught me things to apply to my writing.

On "The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character"

I was going to do my blog from a satirical chauvanist perspective because I think making fun of ignorance is funny. However, I am far too tired.

I have seen a couple other blogs mention the difficulty of decoding much of Ms. Wollstonecraft's writing because of her style of rhetoric. I've read a great deal of things from this time period particularly by Thomas Jefferson and his correspondents, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison etc. Still, Ms. Wollstonecraft has one of the heavier styles that I've seen. It reminds me a lot of how Hamilton wrote, actually. He was a very verbose man. One might call him a wind-bag.

This flourishing rhetoric, in my opinion, is a possible way that Ms. Wollstonecraft attempts to assert her position. She is obviously a very well-educated, knowledgable woman. However, the last word in that sentence is exactly what is holding her back. I think she uses her flowery, sometimes heavy, language to assert herself as an educated person, not just an "innocent" woman. It may be out of insecurity or just show off. On the other hand, it could be that she's just used to talking like that.

On the whole, I really enjoyed this piece of writing. Although, I thought that the second half began to belabor the point. She could have reduced that to simply saying: Women are not meant to be objects of men's affection. They should pursue their own interests and be equal to men as friends and companions.

I actually laughed when I read some of the things that Rosseau and others said. These chauvinists hardly seem to regard women as the same species let alone equals of the same species. The way that these men used the argument style of by treating you like inferiors we're actually protecting and honoring you was quite ingenious to be honest. By convincing another that you're inferior treatment of them is what's best, you have a huge advantage.

What's quite eye-opening and stunning, though, is that women would actually fall for that crap! It's embarassing to me, even as a male, to think that women once thought themselves so weak that it actually made them special.

There are a couple things I specifically wish to address with this blog entry by providing commentary to Ms. Wollstonecraft's writing:

First, the position of women if Ms. Wollstonecraft's goals are achieved:
I really liked that Ms. W is not a classical feminist in the sense that she doesn't want women to control the world and doesn't consider women above men. Therefore, she is not a hypocrite. She believes in equality and reaching a level on which men and women interact and are educated toghether without difference.

Title IX is something to think about in this type of sense. Title IX requires that schools provide equal funding for men's and women's sports activities. This all seems fine. However, equality should not have to be stipulated. It should occur naturally. True, it does not always. It should be expected that institutions fund equally or close to equally for both men and women. Getting specific, men's sports are generally going to cost more than women's anyway due to these factors: More men generally play sports, traditionally male sports such as football and sometimes hockey aree usually more expensive.

This is even more true of affirmative action. Women don't need that leg up. It should be assumed that they get their rights equally, there should not be quotas. I'll hold off on the politics for now.

The other issue I wish to address is a little more deep. That is the difference between what Ms. W refers to as "love" and what she calls "friendship."

I have to say that I disagree with her on this. I think love is not simply the romantic, kissy, huggy stuff. Just as friendship is not the stage when two lovers become intellectually and spiritually connected. In my opinion, infatuation and enamorment is that "love" stage. Friendship stays the entire time when people share interests and converse. Love and companionship is when two people are inseparable except by physical means. It's when they'd do anything for each other and have the highest respect for each other along with having that romantic part of a relationship. Of course, love can mean something else to everybody. It's all semantics.

On "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

First off, I have to say that I really enjoyed this article.

I must admit that I was guilty immediately of what Mr. Carr talks about. I looked at the title of the article and started thinking about it without reading the article. If I had come across this article online and seen it was seven pages I would not have read the entire thing.

Mr. Carr's point could easily be misunderstood by anyone who doesn't actually read the article and even by someone who does read the article. His point is that Google and the net are not making us stupid because we are losing knowledge. In fact, we are gaining knowledge and we get more little snippets. However, we are changing, maybe losing, our ability to reason and derive our own deductions from axioms.

Carr talks about different ways that technology has changed writing styles and learning styles. He uses the examples of the typewriter changing Nietzche's style and Taylor's scientific management. He even mentions Socrates's fear of a decline due to changing technologies. This would all suggest that we are simply getting worse and worse simply for the sake of efficiency. Google, Carr says, is the root of this in our modern society.

I agree with Mr. Carr on many of his points. He addresses the issue that our learning style is changing and that our elastic minds are deteriorating in their ability to think for themselves. He's suggesting that we are capable of teaching old dogs new tricks, but those new tricks aren't always good for us. There is a great deal of validity to be had here. We now seem to just read headlines and tidbits of information and assume that is the story and all we do is take the facts as they are presented. Sometimes this is good, sometimes these facts are slanted, but either way we're not thinking for ourselves and drawing conclusions from which we can learn.

The idea that we are getting too much breadth and not enough depth is an interesting one. I agree that perhaps in a strict context, this is true. We read a little bit about a lot of news articles and never have more than two or three facts behind each one. This means everyone runs around trying to make it seem like he or she knows what he or she is talking about when no one really does.

In another context, it would be silly to say that one has too much breadth. I say this because if you think about it, this would completely discredit a liberal arts education and well-roundedness in knowledge. Those of the brightest thinkers in history were certainly men of liberal arts that had a great deal of broad knowledge in so many areas and just happened to be skilled at two or three (i.e. Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, Plato).

In general I thought the article was well-written. The organization was done well and the rhetoric was done in an educated vernacular style that's easy to read but also skilled. It was necessary for these ideas to be put out there and I'm glad Mr. Carr did that.

Not taking it for granted

This is something I wrote today because I wanted to. I want to share it with as many people as possible and a blog is a good place to start:

In today’s world, it has been said so many times that we take things for granted and once in a while we need to stop and count our blessings. We then proceed to take this for granted and shrug-off the idea of humbling ourselves. Still, it must be stressed that we sometimes need to try looking at our lives from a different point of view. I started to look at things a little differently just over a year ago.

When I was teaching swimming lessons last summer, I was assigned to teach a one-on-one lesson to a young boy. This boy was about six-years-old although his actual date of birth was unknown. He had recently been adopted from China by two loving parents that decided that a good place to start assimilating him into the American culture was swimming lessons.

The first day of lessons was a Monday. I met his parents and I met him and I walked with him to get into the water. As expected, it was difficult to get him to go in the water. For one thing, he had hardly been in the water. Additionally, he spoke very little English and my communication with him was limited as a result. Eventually, I got him in the water with me and for the first day we did little more than get him acquainted with the pool as I carried him around and tried some floating with him.

The second day was no better. It was nearly impossible to get him to leave his parents and come with me. He began crying and wailing and he cowered behind his father. He cried all the way to the shallow end as his father half dragged, half carried him. To get the boy in the water his father had to sit with his feet in the water while I got the boy in the water. We warmed up by playing catch with a football and actually did some real swim instruction that day.

On Wednesday as I came to get the boy from his parents before lessons, I spoke with his father. He explained to me that the reason the boy was so hesitant was that he was frightened to leave his parents and get in the water with the stranger. That was nothing I hadn’t experienced before. I have trouble getting kids into the water all the time. They complain that it’s cold; they don’t like the feeling of the water; they don’t like me; they don’t like leaving their parents.
However, to say this situation was a little bit different would be an understatement. Rather than a simple fear of the water, there was something much deeper and serious that was causing this behavior. The father explained that the boy was afraid that when the parents were trying to get him to go to swim with me that they were instead abandoning him. The boy had been abandoned multiple times as a child in China and had lived out most of his six years with other children impoverished, starving, and unprotected. That hit me hard.

That day was much easier for me and for him as well. We started working together very well and over the next two weeks he made significant strides in his swimming abilities. I was so happy for him. I saw him recently in lessons, this time no longer one-on-one but a full class. He was speaking English and interacting and I was filled with joy for the boy.
After that day that the father explained the situation to me, I truly began to look at life differently. I realized that I am so blessed to live where I do and to have the support groups that I do. Many of us are lucky that we have friends, family, teachers, co-workers, and others that support us in those social institutions. Don’t ever take those people for granted.

One of the most important institutions in our American society is that of the family. Families are those networks of people close to us (and by definition related). A republic is founded with the hopes that citizens are active in their community, educated, and virtuous. The family is the source of this.

The idea of the republican values is one that can be disputed. Most agree on what those values are, but the source of them is a bit shaky. Many would argue that these values are to be derived by a citizen independently. Others suggest that the purpose of education is to inform children of these virtues and teach them so that we educate capable citizens. If this is the case, we have failed in most cases. Still more say that peer groups and friends are the source of these virtues. Nonetheless, it has commonly been the family that has been most successful in teaching and carrying out republican virtues and values.

The argument for independent acquisition of these virtues takes most of its merit in the concept of peer pressure. Those that support this view point are generally classical followers of individualist views like concepts of Locke, Calhoun, and Social Darwinism. They state that if a person is taught citizenship by peers, friends, family, or teachers, this is a restriction of free knowledge. There is certainly merit in this because it is generally true that people end up exhibiting the biases of their friends, family, and teachers in some way.

What, then, is the downside of individualism? It is that it is irrational. Society would be a wonderful place if everyone could capably think for themselves and form their belief systems through their own reasoning. This, however, is a silly notion. We cannot much expect someone to grow to adulthood and form opinions that are his or her own because he or she will not learn the reasoning skills to do so inherently; one must be taught to reason and there is therefore a bias present. Furthermore, everywhere there is faction that influences thought. If one is to form an opinion, there first must be an issue; for there to be issue, there must be difference in opinion; where there is difference in opinion there is the influence of faction. It is impossible for one to truly reason opinions individually.

Also, standard republican values of integrity, prudence, and others are non-partisan and not associated with factions. They are all virtues rather than opinions.

Friends and peers are clearly sources of peer pressure. They would be good places for values and opinions to ferment and for people to share ideas and opinions, but it is not likely that teenagers emerging as citizens will be discussing the values of republican citizenship in their free time. While one of the most effective sources of applicable knowledge and hubs of societies, friend and peer groups are unreliable when it comes to the abstract and not immediate. We cannot expect people to learn to become good citizens from their friends. It doesn’t hurt, but it hardly ever occurs except through subtle and almost unnoticeable modeling that would be missed by the unobservant.

Teachers are also an unreliable source. Although for the most part, we hope that bias is not broadly exhibited, bias is still present. Also, schools and institutions may teach the hard mechanics of civics and social science, but often leave out the soft mechanics that deal with citizenship and virtue.

This leaves the family as the most reliable source of republican virtues and support. A family is tied together by relation and love. Blood relation is like an obligation to love, yet still, that love is a strong one. Families certainly inject their bias into what they teach their young. Who is to say this is a bad thing? Families seem to have the highest success rate in teaching children the ideals and values of American citizenship.

The fact that parents try to instill their own opinions in their children is insignificant because it simply continues balance and hardly works. In any case, children don’t always listen. There are certainly conservative parents that have raised liberal children and vice versa. Kids will always rebel.

The important thing is that children are taught the skills of critical reasoning and the importance
of being a good citizen in a republic. Schools try to teach this but often don’t try hard enough. We must use the institution of family to instill these principles at a young age so that we produce active and knowledgeable citizens. For this to happen, the American family must be strengthened and preserved.

The American family is still one of the greatest institutions there is. Freedom is preached, hopefully practiced, and exhibited. It is extremely influential in the decisions made by individuals, communities, and national legislators. To disregard the American family is to disregard the fabric of the American populace.

To be part of a family in America, or anywhere for that matter, is a gift. It is arguably a natural right to be cared for by a maternal unit and be reared by a full paternal and familial unit. Yet today, so many are deprived of this right.

Be thankful to be and American citizen. Be thankful to have a family. Be thankful that you have people that support you. Be thankful to have friends. Be thankful to have food. Be thankful to trust someone. Be thankful to be trusted. Be thankful that you are loved. Be thankful to know how to love.

Don’t ever take these things for granted.

The Stink about "Skunk Dreams"

As I began reading Ms. Edrich's story, editorial, article, essay (I don't even know how to classify it), I was really expecting something a little different.

The fact that she started with such descriptive, flowery language had me excited for reading a good story. Then she turned it into what appeared as if it was going to be an article about brain chemistry (still interesting) that started with a cute anecdote. From there Ms. Edrich took a somber tone of dissapointment and dissatisfaction with one's state in life. At one point I even annotated "man this chick is emo!" After her melancholy personal statement, she proceeded with a short-lived environmentalist perspective. Another annotative insight, "from dreams to envrionmentalism, what next?"

If you haven't caught my opinion yet, it's that this piece of writing was either so above my level that I didn't pick up on the point or it was just an organizational mess like a fundraiser run by a middle school student council made up of the girls who were elected solely on their looks; I feel like it was two wheels short of a motorcycle and for you military types: one more foul-up away from a CF.

I am being a bit harsh. I just couldn't tell where she was going with it and I don't feel like I learned particularly much from the writing. It was minimally thought provoking only at the point where it brings up the concept of dreams and the strange way in which game farms are actually good for the outdoors.

Furthermore, I did love the description that was used. I can usually get a pretty good visual image even from non-fiction essays. This was like prose fiction in its descriptive abilities. Ms. Edrich almost gave me a sensory overload. Her descriptiveness entertained me enough to keep reading and i enjoyed her use of language. Of course, I was also humored at the random subject matter.

I can't say that I think this is a good article because I don't really see the point. That is probably to my fault because I don't even like reading fiction anymore. Most of the recent works I've read have been scientific or philosophic essays, political in nature, or history texts. I need to start reading for enjoyment again. Sorry, tangent. However, I dod think that Ms. Edrich is probably a skilled writer and I would like to see some of her poetry or any works of fiction she has done.

On "The Talk of the Town"

I'm not so sure how to go about this because I don't know if I should be organized with it or actually do it like my thoughts are just coming out into the keys. Hopefully it will come across ambiguously.

The first article about the Virginia Tech shooting seems to have done the exact thing it was criticizing at first when it goes to talk about gun control. I like the passage about the backwards sensitivity logic that "the aftermath of a terrorist attack is the wrong time to talk about security, the aftermath of a death from lung cancer is the wrong time to talk about smoking and the tobacco industry, and the aftermath of a car crash is the wrong time to talk about seatbelts." Mr. Gopnik brings up an excellent point with this and then goes on to address the issue head first by talking about gun control shortly after a school shooting.

Gun control is a touchy issue and I think Mr. Gopnik takes an interesting view point on it. His suggestion that semi-automatic handguns should be restricted is nothing new, but it is a compromising solution rather than a win-lose one. Suggesting that only "guns that kill people" be banned seems like a nice solution. However, I find it a silly notion for anyone could think that would possibly work. There's always that old colloquialism that "guns don't kill people, people kill people," or any variation of such. For one things, people can kill by other means than semi-automatic handguns. Don't try to tell anyone that no one has ever been killed by a .22 rifle or a revolver or a knife for that matter. I don't have any bettter solutions, to be honest that direction is probably the one I would take in this matter, but it seems like a solution that won't do a lot.



Mr. Gopnik also brings up that in many other nations, gun laws have been tightened shortly following shooting sprees and that in most cases shootings have gone down significantly. This is wonderful news for those countries and maybe America could get the hint. There is something very different about America though and it's not to do with the machismo of owning one's own weapon. It has more to do with the system of laws and the U.S. way of government. The biggest hurdle, legally, is the Second Amendment. That is, the right of citizens to bear arms. It is probably an intentionally vague piece of legislation designed to create debate over who can own a gun as well as the when, why, how, and where of the same issue. Taken literally, there are to be virtually no restrictions on gun ownership. This law, of course, was written at a time when dueling was often considered as gentlemanly as a public debate, but sentiments towards firearms, as well as firearms themselves, have changed drastically. The second obstacle would be the issue of state's rights. The Second Amendment clearly makes itself a national issue, but prudence would leave the power to impose firearm regulations to the states. As someone that cannot even legally own a firearm and has grown-up in a very safe community I have no particular stance on firearms except that which I can derive from the Constitution.



The article by Ms. Sontag regarding 9/11 irked me a bit. Her writing seemed to drip with anti-Americanism, and that is something I usually can't stand. I think her feelings go a lot deeper than conveyed in this particular article because she wouldn't say everything she wanted to say less than two weeks after the attack in such a reputable magazine. Even publishing what she did seems risky.



I respect what she wrote but that doesn't mean I like it. Referring to the United States Air Force as "cowardly" is a low blow...very low. Everyone can have their own idea of what courage is, but I don't agree with Ms. Sontag's. I don't consider it honorable or in courage to kill yourself in the act of killing others. It's true that what those men did required a lot of balls, I might even call it bravery. It is also true that bombing from up high doesn't require a ton of courage necessarily, too. I think Ms. Sontag has some well-founded points about military intelligence and the view of the American public. However, her sarcastic tone is disrespectful. Given, she has every right towrite what she pleases. I am bothered by words that are unpatriotic when conveyed in such a condescending, sarcastic manner.

Me, me, me, it's gotta be all about ME!

Greetings everyone!

Most of you that are reading this have probably known me for quite some time and many of you may not have. Nevertheless, you're going to learn something about me in the following paragraphs.

THE ACTIVITIES
My life for the past four years has revolved around high school and those activities that are satellites of it. During the school year, a day for me might involve coming in anywhere between 5:45 or 7:30 in the morning. I might work-out before school and then at least three out of five mornings a week I'll have a meeting. Those activities that require me to attend those meetings are some of the most important, defining parts of who I am...or so it will say in my college application essays. Specifically, those activities are mainly student government related.

The school day is probably the easiest part of my day. I make it through class on the premise that I'll get sleep later that night so I don't have to sleep in class (it turns out I just never sleep). The hardest classes are the ones that are designed to be easy because if I don't like the topic or find it too easy I just won't pay attention and I get really bored. For instance, I hated sitting through Econ and Poli Sci but loved AP Physics and AP US History. From classes I go to a sport.

Yes, sports. Football in the fall, swimming in the winter, track in the spring with an average of two weeks in between each two seasons. Of those two weeks in between, one is usually three days of rest and all the the other days are in the weight room. During football season or swim season, it is not uncommon for me to be at school for over 13 hours. My longest day was probably 5:45 AM-9:00 PM. It's pretty obvious by that evidence and to anyone who knows me, that I put enough time into school-related activities that it's slowly killing me.

THE SOCIAL LIFE
It doesn't exist on weeknights usually...unless I get hooked on Facebook and talk to someone for a long time. Bedtime during the school year is 9:00, sometimes as early as 8:00. If homework isn't done by 9:45, it's not getting done that night. Of course, that's going to have to change this year.
On weekends during the school year I either embrace the opportunity to do nothing (but I can't remember the last time I could do that), or hang-out with friends somewhere. During the summers I'm too busy during the day to hang-out but I'm usually out at night.

THE FAMILY
I have a younger brother that will be a sophmore this year. His name is Joseph and he is beastly. He's bigger than me and looks like a tank. He's finally come to his senses and is putting his power to good work on the football field.
My mother, Toni, is wonderful. There are obviously times that we are at each other's throats for no apparent reason but she'd do anything for me no matter what. She's probably one of the best moms any kid could ask for even if she is a bit protective.
My father's name is Tom. He can never sit down so he's always outside in the garden or going for a walk or something. He's been really into genealogy lately to keep him busy in the cold weather.

MISCELLANEOUS
My favorite type of music is the blues. When I say blues I mean any and all of it. Anything from Robert Johnson to Eric Clapton to Sonny Boy Williamson to The Who to The Temptations to The Black Keys to G. Love. I'll listen to anything but my favorites are always bluesy and rockin' beats with some soulful vocals or no vocals at all. I enjoy listening to it and playing it on guitar, harmonica, and sometimes piano.

I also really enjoy poetry and the written word in general. I don't like reading it much but I love hearing things read and I love writing them too. That's something I'll bet a lot of people wouldn't guess about me. I like the playfulness of the classic Shel Silverstien's Where the Sidewalk Ends and I like those random inspirational ones. One of the best is The Man in the Glass which is of an anonymous author.

I feel that words, especially in the English language, are some of the most powerful tools, weapons, and instruments that we hold. The best part is that almost everyone is capable of hearing, speaking, or writing them. I love writing and that's why I've signed up for AP Comp and I hope to expand my knowledge and abilities.

I look back on this passage and realize how many times I've referred to myself in the first person and each time I see an "I" or a "me." I've realized something:
It is the sick, self-serving state of our language that the only word to be capitalized regardless of context, situation, or where it appears in a sentence is that word that denotes the speaker or writer as the subject. That single letter is always capitalized and always stands tall and slender above the rest. It would be the Anglo way to create a written language that does this.

It's 11:00 PM now and I promised myself I would be in bed at 9:00 tonight because I've been very tired lately. I can't stop lying to myself. I also can't stop saying that monosyllabic, monocharactered word.